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Thales Optronique (TOSA) - Lasers

THALES Optronique is a world leader in design, development and manufacturing of high energy nanosecond lasers and high intensity, ultra-short Ti:Sa femtosecond lasers. For more than 20 years, THALES has been driving innovative solutions with a large patents portfolio and scientific collaborations to provide laser systems with unprecedented performances to meet the needs of the most demanding scientific applications.

Beyond the exceptional technical performances, THALES development trend is to provide the most reliable and easy-to-use system.

Thales proposes a wide range of lasers solutions for the most demanding applications:

Nd:YAG, Nd:YLF and Glass Phosphate Nanosecond Lasers.

Custom or standard Ti:Sa Femtosecond Systems
(high peak power and high average power)

[ NEWS ]

Scientific News

THALES has recently been awarded a contract in the field of ultra short high power laser systems:

In collaboration with the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, Thales will develop an Intense Laser System.

The agreement with the University of Strathclyde stipulates that, as part of the latest programme at the new Scottish Centre for the Application of Plasma-based Accelerators (SCAPA), Thales will develop a 350 TeraWatt laser (i.e. 35 thousands of billions of watts) based on ultra-short pulses of less than 30 femtoseconds (30 thousandths of billionths of a second).

SCAPA, a world-leading research centre, well-known in the field of inertial fusion, nuclear physics (isotope production), radiobiology and medical imaging, is home to a suite of high-power femtosecond terawatt laser systems. The 350 TeraWatt laser will operate at 5 Hertz (5 times/second), an unprecedented repetition rate at this level of instantaneous power. The programme, fully compatible with an anticipated upgrade of up to 1 PetaWatt (i.e. one million of billions of watts), started in May and will be completed in Glasgow in January 2017.

Spatial News

Thales has been awarded the title of Laser of the Future by the French National Space Agency (Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales – CNES) whereby Thales will develop a laser for the SUPERCAM instrument intended for the 2020 mission to Mars.

Taking into account the success of the CHEMCAM programme, Thales’s SUPERCAM, an improved laser allowing an additional spectroscopic function - called RAMAN spectroscopy, has been selected by the CNES for a 2 year program that started in May after a 5 month development phase.

Thales’s work with CNES, developing SUPERCAM, an instrument used for matter analysis, uses the Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) principle: whereby a high power laser heats the matter into vapour. A spectroscopic camera then identifies each chemical component.

With a record of 250,000 shots, CHEMCAM is a real success !

The Thales CHEMCAM Laser, is currently in operation on Mars on-board the Curiosity Rover. More than just scientific equipment, CHEMCAM acts as an eye for Curiosity allowing the rover to choose the right direction.

NASA's Mars Curiosity rover had completed a Martian year - 687 Earth days - on June 24 2014. The mission met its main goal of determining whether the Martian Gale Crater ever was habitable for simple life forms. The answer, a historic "yes", came from two mudstone slabs that the rover sampled with its drill. Simply stated, thanks to its Thales spatial laser, ChemCam is telling us what the rocks that Curiosity has encountered since landing are made of. The primary objectives of ChemCam are to rapidly analyse rocks and soil to determine their compositions and to identify samples that would be of greatest interest to scientists for analysis by other instruments on-board Curiosity.

Industrial news
The GAÏA I laser, delivering more than 8 J at 532 nm at 5 Hz , is the new generation of high energy Nd:YAG laser ruggedized for industrial applications.

[ R&D Activity and Large Programs ]
As a key player on the Scientific Laser Marketplace, Thales has a large R&D activity to constantly release innovative market on the markets.

Our continuous research activities are key factor in the always increasing performance of our systems, and in the ever expanding range of their applications.

We have established strong and long-term relation with well-known laboratories and partners ensuring smooth research to industry transfer of new processes and lasers concepts. In this R&D network, Thales Research & Technology (TRT) plays a key role and French famous laboratories are involved (LOA, LULI, CNRS, CEA, Institut d’Optique, ENSTA,..)

Part of our R&D activity is also the participation to famous laser programs, such as BELLA Project for LBNL in USA, CETAL Project for INFLPR in Romania, and, ELI-NP Project for IFIN-HH in Romania.

Another demonstration of our R&D capability is the CHEMCAM instrument, for which a spatial laser for LIBS analysis of the Martian soil has been designed. The CHEMCAM instrument is integrated in the CURIOSITY rover which were launched successfully on Mars in August 2012. This program has been performed in collaboration with CNES (France) and NASA (USA)

[LPSS Lasers for industry]

THALES family of Flash lamp Pumped Solid State laser offers a broad spectrum of high energy and wavelength (including IR, green and UV) designed for use in industrial applications.

These solutions are ideal for cutting and drilling, large area ablation, silicon annealing and laser shock processing. Today, the new Gaia-I pushes forward the limits of output energy reachable at high repetition rates with high reliability, and unprecedented pulse stability.

Thales Flash lamp pumped lasers have always been a major axis of development. The world acclaimed SAGA series, Nd:YAG lasers with repetition rates up to 10Hz and energies up to 1.8J at 532nm.Today, the GAIA-I pushes forward the limits of output energy reachable at high repetition rates with high reliability, and unprecedented pulse stability.

This compact and ruggedized Nd:YAG laser delivers 8 J at 532 nm up to 5 Hz with a top hat beam profile for the most demanding industrial applications. Now available as well in high M² version, GAIA-I is perfectly adapted to beam shaping optics (refractive or diffractive). Thanks to its very low spatial coherence, the shaped laser beam can reach outstanding low spatial modulations. For processing more demanding in terms of energy, the GAIA HP remains the most suitable choice.